Mountain Man Bust
1/8th scale resin and white metal kit from Dave Sparrow
Painted in 1999
Sadly no longer with us, Dave Sparrow sculpted for many, many years, his production of master figures supplied a lot of different companies, including Hinchcliffe and Rosedale Miniatures, although his love of Native American subjects from the early colonisation of North America were what he chose to sculpt and produce for his own releases.
I have seven of his flat figures, five busts featuring different tribes of Native Americans, along with two full figure flats that are Mountain Men / Trappers from a imilar period.
This bust however, is the only full round kit that I got off him when he was still trading at Euro Militaire, and was one of the first kits I’d come across to feature a mix of white metal and resin components, along with small beads and wire to add necklaces to the model.
Photo #1 shows the two main components fastened together, the head and hat being separated from the
I’ve begun painting the face and the buckskin shirt at this point – ever impatient to get going – and used a mix of Winsor and Newton Flesh tint, mixed with some Yellow Ochre oils to produce a pale mid-tone, darkening the mix for the shadows with some Mars Brown oils.
The buckskin is a mix of Yellow Ochre and Raw Umber oils, with Titanium White used to lighten the mix for mid-tones and highlights.
Photo #2. Looking back at this, painted twenty seven years ago ( Ohhhh, how that makes me feel old ! ), I realise several things.
Not least, that even I can see my painting techniques hve improved over that time, that I didn’t use enough contrast, and that the colour palette I used back then has changed and been adjusted to stronger pigmented paints.
There’s not much to say about this shot really – the shirt has been painted, but because of the understated contrast, the painted areas don’t really stand out from the undercoated sections of the rest of the bust.
Photo #3 shows the white metal hand and rifle temporarily put in place. The eyes were very difficult to paint on this piece, they’re partially hidden under the brim of the hat, which makes them awkward to get at with a brush.
Again, and it won’t be the last time I say it, the contrast isn’t high enough on the face, and I could have made more of the shadows cast by the brim.
At least the buckskin colouration shows up better now.
Photo #4. So I mentioned wire and beads at the beginning, and on top of those there are several white metal bear claws as well.
The wire is relatively soft, and although the bear claws need drilling so they and the beads can be slid onto the wire, it’s not much trouble to form up a necklace as shown.
The hand and rifle shown here are a heavy piece of metal, and will need pinning to the wrist to offer support and a secure joint. I’d also add that a plinth with a fairly large footprint is required, otherwise the model can topple over when finished.
Photo #5. To disguise the wire holding the Bear Claws and Beads, I used some very fine electrical wire, stripped out of some speaker wire, to wrap around it as shown here. It just allows for a bit more detail, although it will hardly be noticed on the finished piece.
While Dave Sparrow could be considered as a typical sculptor of the 1970’s and 80’s, albeit a very good one, and some might look down on his sculpting compared to what is available now in the third decade of the twenty first century, there is a lot of detail on his models that stands up to that added to current offerings, although it may need treating in a different manner.
Photo #6. The hair and beard for example are heavily engraved with an attempt at modelling individual hairs, as too is the fur of the hat. The beadwork decoration on the shirt is highly retailed too, offering a good canvas for different and colourful designs.
That sewn edge to the belt took time and care to produce, and I think these details show what love Dave had for the subject matter.
Just an aside, and coming to the present day, it’s amazing what you can find when you’re not looking for it. At a street market in the Belgian city of Ghent this year ( 2026 ) I found a gorgeous book wholly focussed on Native American “War Shirts” .
Twenty Euros, and I couldn’t get it bought fast enough, it along with “th Language of the Robe” – a book I got off Poste Militaire many years ago add up to a superb reference source for Native American and related subjects….. What do they say about the right references coming along after you actually need them ?
Photo #7. Moving on, there’s more beadwork on the rifle cover, and I used references from Native American books I did possess possess at the time to recreate designs for these areas.
Photo #8 and I was never quite sure what animal that is supposed to be on the front of the hat. I guessed a racoon, as it appears too small to be a beaver, and so painted it in a mixture of grey oils.
The sculpting of the fur on the hat is possibly one of the weaker areas of the bust, and nowadays I would in all likelihood cover this with a thin layer of Magic Sculpt and recreate something a little more accurate.
If I can hazard a guess though, I think this is one of the final sections of the model that Dave was sculpting and he’d either got tired of sculpting hair and fur, and just wanted to get it finished.
Why do I say that ?
Well, look at the detail and crae that’s gone into the hair and beard, a lot more time has been spent on both those areas, and they look a lot more “real”.
Final thoughts
So OK, this is an old kit, finding one for sale might be very difficult, but it’s worth searching out.
Sad to say that my generation of modellers are getting old, we’re seeing a few of us passing away, and that means that model collections amassed over decades return to the market.
Rarities do occasionally turn up, and I’m sure that any modeller no longer with us would be pleased to see a kit get painted that he, himself had run out of time to put colour onto.
As for this kit, there are one or two weak points which could easily be fixed, and in contrast there are a lot of positives to the very good details that are sculpted with care and precision.
There’s very little clean-up of the components, and there’s so many different designs that can be used on the beadwork that’s already there, without even considering adding more to the shirt, to make a really colourful and eye-catching model.
If you see one of these for sale anytime, I’d recommend picking it up.